Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science.

Blomgren, Magnus

Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science.

The EU Hybrid: Incrementalism with Democracy?2020In: The European Union and the return of the nation state / [ed] Antonia Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, Karin Leijon, Anna Michalski, Lars Oxelheim, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 1, p. 27-57Chapter in book (Refereed)

Abstract [en]

This chapter argues that the debate about the proper relationship between member states and EU institutions usually pits those who favour emphasising intergovernmental principles against those who think that the Union must have an increased element of supranationalism. One result of a stalemate between these two positions is that the EU has developed into a hybrid regime. However, an empirical examination of recent debates in four important policy areas conducted by the authors reveals that member states often take a third position, incrementalism, which is a step-wise process characterised by advocating small policy reforms without really altering the hybrid. The main drawback of the incrementalism position is that it has only a vague notion of the need for and possibility of representative democracy.

This dissertation explores political representation and its manifestation within the European Union (EU). The main purpose is to examine the representative roles of Members of the European Parliament (MEP) in the context of cross–pressure between the national level and the EU level. This involves an analysis of how the MEPs under-stand their roles, how they organize their work, and how they have voted in the European Parliament (EP) in 1999-2002. It also includes a study of how national party organizations adapt to the EU environment and how this influences the MEPs link to the national arena. The study is based on various sources, such as interviews, formal documents and voting data.

The most under-researched part of the cross-pressure has been the national link and the empirical focus of the thesis is on that link. It is a comparative study of parties in Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden. In each country, three parties were selected (social democratic, right-wing and green parties). By using a focused comparative method, and by controlling for certain independent variables, the ambition is to go beyond description and identify explanations for why MEPs adopt certain roles.

The overall picture that emerges is of a relatively weak link between MEPs and the national level. To a certain extent, MEPs express frustration over their limited role in the national arena and over the lack of input from the national arena in their work at the European level. Most of the parties struggle to include MEPs in their organizational set-up, and the MEPs experience a growing hostility within the parties toward them. In general, the lack of interest and knowledge in the national arena, concerning the EU in general and specifically the work of the MEPs, obscures the role of the MEPs. They become EU ambassadors at the national level, rather than elected representatives at the EU level.

The dissertation also tests variables that are thought to influence MEPs’ roles: the type of electoral system, popular opinion on EU issues, whether their party is in government, the party’s ideological heritage, and if the party organizes more advanced coordination mechanisms. The main result is that the working assumption that MEPs are influenced by characteristics in the national arena is shown to be largely correct. That is, some of the identified aspects of the national political context do influence how the MEPs understand their roles. For example, the character of the electoral system influences attitudes among the MEPs. However, that relationship is not as simple and straightforward as much of the literature suggests. Rather, the results in this study suggest that the most important aspect of the relationship between the national level and the MEPs is whether parties or others (such as national parliamentarians) actively engage in the work of the MEPs. It matters how parties design the relationship between the levels, especially for how and where MEPs direct their main attention, but also in terms of how MEPs vote in the EP. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of further research into how parties facilitate the link between the national and the EU level.

The purpose of this article is to study how Sweden’s political parties handled the processof constitutional review from 2004-2008. In particular the analysis examines howparties choose between their office-seeking, policy-seeking and vote-seeking goalsand the desire to maintain intra party agreement. Three expectations are identified: (a)parties’ different strategic situations lead them to advocate different long-term goals;(b) different party levels will take different stands in order to increase their influencevis-a-vis other levels; (c) party leaderships will try to increase their freedom to negotiatewith others by avoiding extensive intra party debates or decisions. The study isbased on 30 interviews with representatives closely involved in the constitutional-reformprocess. The conclusion is that parties have self-interested goals as regards thequestion of how the political game should be regulated. The conflict between differentintra-party levels is also obvious. However, due to party members’ disinterest inthe constitutional review, party leaders did not need to adopt a variety of strategies toavoid a large scale intra-party debate. It was enough for them to claim that the resultingcompromise was actually something of a victory for each party.

17. Det röda Norrland och det blå Sverige

Blomgren, Magnus

Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science.

Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science.

Political parties and the European Union2015In: Research methods in European Union studies / [ed] Lynggaard, Kennet, Manners, Ian & Löfgren, Karl, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 266-280Chapter in book (Refereed)

Abstract [en]

The role of political parties in modern democracies is contested. Traditionally, parties have been associated with a number of functions and, especially in a western European context, given a more or less hegemonic role over the political process. However, the question of whether political parties actually have (or should have) this prominent role in modern democracies has long been debated. In this so-called party decline debate, a number of tendencies, such as voter de-alignment and membership decline, are used to indicate the less dominant role of political parties, and it is argued that their adaptive capacity is poor (Webb, 2002: 3). Even though some of the critical remarks regarding the future role of political parties are pertinent, the ambition of this chapter is not to judge in this debate. It is rather written with the assumption that political parties are (still) indispensable parts of representative democracy as we know it, and if political parties fail to integrate the political system, express demands, represent various views and identify political leaders, democracy will lose in the end.

Few political parties are willing to lead the public debate on how the European Union should develop and parties rarely publicly discuss issues on the EU agenda. This is probably one of the most important democratic problems in the contemporary EU. When and why parties are willing (or not willing) to discuss European cooperation is therefore an essential issue in which political science should engage. Previous research has shown that parties that are internally divided on EU issues downplay these issues in order to avoid internal disputes. At the same time, parties that have severe intraparty conflicts over the issue are unable to contain the debate. Thus, parties that are unified in their position on EU issues and parties that are heavily split speak about the EU, but others do not. Also, earlier research has shown that political parties downplay issues in response to internal divisions among their supporters. It is argued in this article that the focus should not be solely on intraparty conflict or whether or not a party's voters are hesitant or disunited, but rather on how these factors interact in order to better understand how parties act strategically regarding EU issues. Using a new dataset that relies on quantitative content analysis of quality newspapers during the national election campaigns in the period 1983–2010 in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden, it is found that parties that have a high degree of internal dissent on European issues, while at the same time having an equally divided electorate, are the parties that are most present in the public debate. Hence, it is the interaction between these two important factors that explains much of the variation in the amount of attention paid to European issues in national election campaigns.

For the very first time in EU history, the 2014 EP elections provided citizens with the opportunity to influence the nomination of the Commission President by casting a vote for the main Europarties’ ‘lead candidates’. By subjecting the position of the Commission President to an open political contest, many experts have formulated the expectation that heightened political competition would strengthen the weak electoral connection between EU citizens and EU legislators, which some consider a root cause for the EU’s lack of public support. In particular, this contest was on display in the so-called ‘Eurovision Debate’, a televised debate between the main contenders for the Commission President broadcasted live across Europe. Drawing on a quasi-experimental study conducted in 24 EU countries, we find that debate exposure led to increased cognitive and political involvement and EU support among young citizens. Unfortunately, the debate has only reached a very small audience.